Discover Guthrie County Photo Contest Winner

Over the winter, the Guthrie County Tourism organization had a photo contest for their upcoming "Discover Guthrie County" booklet that showcases the many attractions and sites that can be seen in Guthrie County. The contest allowed up to five images to be submitted so I went to my photographs and selected a few favorites that I've taken since I purchased the Nikon D90.

After all the entries were reviewed, I was lucky enough to win the contest with "A Golden Moment" which captured a Yale farmer combining his field in a late October sunset.


Other photographs that I entered into the contest. "Championship Form" was also printed in the magazine underneath things to do for golf.

High Dynamic Range photography

Recently I was able to pick up some HDR (High Dynamic Range) software that is allowing me to create HDR images out of my photographs. HDR is known for the ability to allow a photographer to create an image that has a wider dynamic range of colors by representing a wider range of intensity levels found in real scenes. Today's DSLR's are only able to capture a certain amount of colors in a image at once, however, by capturing multiply images at different exposure levels, a photographer can combine these images into one by using HDR software.

Not all images can be used to create a great looking HDR image and as I go forth, I'll learn what exposure values in an image create the best looking HDR. So far, I've did a few photographs of the golf course and sunsets. These combined nine different exposed photographs ranging from -2.0 to +2.0. By using the software I acquired, these images offer a wider range of color and depth that I couldn't get with just processing one image.

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Chasing the White

The spring snow goose season can be alot of hard work but also very rewarding when a hunt comes together. This spring was no different then years past, lots of mudd in the fields and very little success on decoying the snow geese. That didn't stop me and a few of my friends from chasing them. All of the hard work paid off on the last hunt of the year when we had small bunches of snows come right into the decoys.

The photographs below are from a few of the hunts and after putting out the decoys. We switched locations of the spread one particular day and then I took sometime to take photographs of the decoys. On the D90 this spring was the 70-300mm lense and I did most of these shots in RAW and aperture priority to control the depth of field that I wanted to get on the particular shot.

#1. Getting some Zzzz's in the Ground Force.

#2. Afternoon sunset over the decoys.


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#4. During the off season, I added TnT shells to the sillosocks and it really created a nice spread of decoys.

#5. Black & white

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#7. Close up of the TnT's.


#8. Black & white with alittle infrared mixed in PSE8.

#9. This young man got to experience the last day and shot the first single snow that came in.

#10. We had to deal with foggy conditions throughout the spring.

#11. Getting some practice in before the snows come in.

#12. Experienced another great sunrise this morning.

#12. A flock of Canadas going north to their breeding grounds.

#13. Beautiful oranges and reds filled the sky on this morning.

#14. A young hunter looking to the west for approaching snow geese.